What is What’s Down?
What’s Down is a mood-debugging web app that helps you figure out why you're feeling down. It asks a short series of questions about your physical state, habits, and circumstances, then suggests likely causes and practical next steps.
It is not therapy, medical advice, or a substitute for professional mental-health care. See the disclaimer, privacy policy, terms of service, and acceptable use.
why this exists
You've been diagnosing your own moods your whole life. You're bad at it. Here's why.
Short memory
You evaluate how you feel based on the last two hours, not the last two days. You slept badly three nights ago and your body is still paying the bill. Your brain doesn't file that under 'cause of mood' — it just feels like today is bad for no reason.
Recency bias
Whatever happened last feels like the explanation. The passive-aggressive text this morning feels like 'the reason' — but you were already on empty before it arrived. The trigger isn't the cause.
Projection
You're blaming external things — the weather, someone's tone, your inbox — for what is actually a physiological state. When your blood sugar is low and you haven't been outside, everything around you looks like a threat or an annoyance.
Narrative addiction
Your brain demands a story. 'I feel bad because of X' is satisfying in a way that 'I haven't eaten a real meal or left the apartment in 36 hours' is not. The story feels deep. The actual cause feels embarrassing. So you go with the story.
Jealousy dressed as self-awareness
You see someone else moving forward — a promotion, a relationship, a trip — and your neutral state suddenly reads as failure. You're not diagnosing your mood. You're comparing your insides to their outsides and calling the gap a symptom.
Solutionism
You want to fix the feeling with an insight, a conversation, or a revelation. Not a nap. Not food. Not sunlight. Those feel too simple for the depth of what you're experiencing. They're usually not.
Emotional inflation
A 4-out-of-10 day gets labeled a crisis because you have no calibrated baseline. Every bad mood feels significant. Some of them are just Tuesday.
Avoidance disguised as introspection
Sometimes 'figuring out why I feel bad' is just a more sophisticated way of not doing the thing you're avoiding. The spiral feels productive. It isn't. You already know what needs to happen.